


Not of This World

by listentothewordsyousay



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 03:04:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19142278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/listentothewordsyousay/pseuds/listentothewordsyousay
Summary: In the terrible mud and slush of Belgium and France, amid the streaking searchlights and the whistling shells, it was not uncommon for Nurse Claire Beauchamp to treat young men who had lost the ability to speak. Some, desperately clinging onto their training, would only tell us their name and rank. Others wept piteously for their mothers. But only one seemed to be of a different world.





	1. Chapter 1

I always seemed to be saying goodbye to men I might have loved; had I had enough time.

In the terrible mud and slush, amid the streaking searchlights and the whistling shells, it was not uncommon to find young men who had lost the ability to speak. Some, desperately clinging onto their training, would only tell us their name and rank. Others wept piteously for their mothers. 

There were so many of those.

The American who had found the young man I was on my way to see had cheerfully described him as ‘away with the birds, sweetie pie’ and winked at me. I had merely glared at him before marching off as purposefully as I could in a pair of rubber wellies. 

‘Good morning,’ I said softly, pulling open the canvas tent and letting the sunlight bleed into the gloom. The patient was sitting on a freshly made camp bed, facing away from me. His head was bent, his hand clutching the opposite shoulder, as he rocked slightly back and forth. Dislocated shoulder, I thought immediately. A dreadful hump rose at that side, and the arm hung at an impossible angle.

Four years of army training had left me relatively impervious to the smell of blood and filth. That was not unusual. What was unusual was that the blood was running down a torn linen shirt, staining a tartan wrapping. Scottish, obviously, but his uniform looked like something from a painting.

The young man looked up for the first time. It was a strong, good-humoured face, but it was twisted with pain and confusion. 

'Mistress. Tell me where I am, for I dinnae know what sort of world this is.’


	2. Chapter 2

‘I’m Nurse Beachamp,’ I said, inexplicably returning to my maiden name. ‘You’ve been injured. Can you remember what happened?’

‘Aye, I fell wi’ my hand out, when the musket ball knocked me off my saddle. I landed with all my weight on the hand, and crunch! There it was. And then it all went black, and I woke up with the most terrible noise around me, as Hell itself was opening. There was a band of men who rescued me and brought me here.’

He was Scottish, definitely a Highlander by way of speech, but a musket? Saddle? I racked my brain as I turned to my supplies. Was he traumatised into a fantasy, perhaps?

He sat perfectly still as I reset his shoulder, only gritting his teeth and slightly grunting in the face of what must have been tremendous pain. ‘I need to disinfect your wound,’ I said. ‘I’ll cut away your shirt, stay still.’

‘Disinfect?’ He repeated, chunking the word into the robotic syllables of someone who had never heard the term before.

‘Yes. I need to cleanse the wound to prevent infection.’ Could trauma run so deeply? His eyes, deep, blue and clear, seemed to me entirely genuine.

‘Ye know how to do that, then?’

I blinked, wondering if I had perhaps become affected by constant barrage happening overhead, before taking my scissors to snip away at the rough linen. His broad shoulders stiffened perceptibly as I gently lifted the material over his head and turned to see his back, which was crisscrossed with faded white lines. He had been savagely flogged, and more than once.

Even after everything I had seen, there was something shockingly brutal about these scars that made me draw in my breath.


	3. Chapter 3

I was not unaware of the dangers of Patient Fraser’s apparently inexplicable appearance. As a healthy young man, he ought to have a rank and service number. He ought to have been wearing a uniform. And he ought to have been discharged and returned to active service.

Three things saved him. He did not know where he was. He did not know the date. And he knew nothing of the conflict which had raged around the world for the last six years.

‘Blocked it out, poor bugger,’ was the official medical diagnosis. I nodded and my brain agreed. Yet something within me whispered another explanation, one which was completely nonsensical in the cold light of day.

But in the hellish world of the night watch, when the groans and screams of young men echoed around the field hospital in cacophony with the shells and searchlights overhead, the idea that the past was still, somehow, open, was one my heart willing to believe.

‘I feel like a prisoner,’ he complained one evening, as I probed his wound for signs of infection.

‘Better than active duty,’ I replied.

He pursed his mouth in agreement. I knew he flinched with every sound from the outside world.

‘The world is in a better condition than this, is it not? Man tearing each other apart so cruelly?’

Breaking any number of army regulations, I sat on the edge of his cot, lifting my eyes to meet his gaze. ‘I’m not sure any more.’

I felt like we sat there for a long time, as if the war stilled around us while I watched the blue oceans of his eyes, framed by long, coppery eyelashes. I heard my own voice as if it existed apart from me too, promising to provide a temporary escape.


End file.
